First Woman Ascends to Top Drill Sergeant Spot

[Sigaba]

Source is here.

September 22, 2009
First Woman Ascends to Top Drill Sergeant Spot
By JAMES DAO

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — It may come as no surprise that the Army’s new top drill sergeant idolizes Gen. George S. Patton Jr., has jumped out of planes 33 times, aces every physical training test and drives a black Corvette with “noslack” vanity plates.

But consider this: the sergeant is a woman.

On Tuesday, the Army will make Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa L. King, 48, commandant of its drill sergeant school here. It is a first. No woman has run one of the Army’s rigorous schools for drill instructors.

Petite yet imposing, Sergeant Major King seems a drill sergeant at heart, ever vigilant for busted rules: soldiers nodding off in class, soldiers with hair a fraction too long, soldiers who run too slow.

“Are you crazy?” she shouts at one who is walking across a lawn. “Get off my grass!”

The eighth of 12 children, the sergeant major is the daughter of a sharecropper who grew cucumbers and tobacco near Fort Bragg, N.C. Her first job in the Army was as a postal clerk, a traditional position for women in those days.

She says she regrets not having been deployed to a war zone during her 29-year Army career, though she has trained many soldiers who were. And now, in her new job, she will have significant influence over the basic training of every enlisted soldier.

Last year the Army consolidated several drill schools into a single campus at this sprawling post, meaning Sergeant Major King, with her staff of 78 instructors, will oversee drill sergeant training for the entire Army.

Famous for their Smokey Bear hats, booming voices and no-nonsense demeanor, those sergeants transform tens of thousands of raw recruits into soldiers each year. It is one of the backbone jobs of the military, and having a woman in charge underscores the expanding role of women in the Army’s leadership.

But Sergeant Major King’s ascension is also a reminder of the limits of gender integration in the military. Just 8 percent of the active-duty Army’s highest-ranking enlisted soldiers — sergeants major and command sergeants major — are women, though more than 13 percent of Army personnel are female.

In particular, the Army has struggled to recruit women as drill sergeants, citing pregnancy, long hours and the prohibition against women serving in frontline combat positions as reasons. Sergeant Major King said one of her priorities would be to recruit more women into her school.

But she pushes back at the notion that she has risen because she is a woman. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a female,” Sergeant Major King said. “I see a soldier.”

As a child, she refused her mother’s cooking lessons, insisting on driving her father’s tractor and playing basketball instead. When her siblings got in trouble, she volunteered to take their spankings.

It was the sight of a commanding-looking female soldier in a stylish red beret at the fort that inspired her to enlist while still in high school. Within three years, she was sent to drill sergeant school, graduating as one of five women in a class of 30.

Willie Shelley, a retired command sergeant major who supervised Sergeant Major King in three postings, said that he once promoted her over the objections of his commander into a position at Fort Bragg that had been held only by men.

“Turns out she was about the best first sergeant they ever had,” Mr. Shelley said. “It would not surprise me that she could become the first female sergeant major of the Army,” he added, referring to its top enlisted soldier.

In her clipped speaking style, acute command of regulations and visible disgust with slovenliness, Sergeant Major King prowls the grounds of Fort Jackson, where she was the top noncommissioned officer for a human resources battalion before being promoted to commandant.

“She can always find the cigarette butt under the mattress,” said Patrick J. Jones, a public affairs officer at Fort Jackson. Respect for rules and dedication to training is what keeps soldiers alive in combat, Sergeant Major King says, and she expects drill sergeants to embody that ethic 24 hours a day. “Most soldiers want to be like their drill sergeants,” she said. “They are the role models.”

Yet for all her gruffness, she can show surprising tenderness toward her charges. She describes her soldiers as “my children” and her approach to disciplining them as “tough love.” She wells up with emotion while describing how she once hugged a burly master sergeant whose wife had left him.

“She is confident, no nonsense, but compassionate about what’s right for the soldier,” said Col. John E. Bessler, her commander in a basic training battalion four years ago.

After a stint as a drill sergeant in her early 20s, Sergeant Major King went through a series of rapid promotions: aide to the secretary of defense, then Dick Cheney; senior enlisted positions near the demilitarized zone in Korea; with the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg; and at NATO headquarters in Europe.

For a time in her 30s, she was married to another soldier. She got pregnant but lost the baby, and eventually divorced. The failure of her marriage, she said, brought on a period of soul-searching that led her to study the Bible. She was planning to retire and join the ministry when her appointment to the drill sergeant school was announced over the summer.

“On the other side, the military life, I was doing so good,” she said. “But my personal life just stunk.” Since her divorce, she added, “I just pour my heart into these soldiers.”

Looking back on her years in the Army, Sergeant Major King says she can think of few occasions where men challenged her authority because she was a woman. “And when they did,” she said, “I could handle it.”

Asked if women should be allowed into frontline combat units, she said yes, but only if they meet the same standards as men.

While she says most women cannot meet those standards, she believes she can. As if to prove her point, she scored a perfect 300 on her semiannual physical training test last week, doing 34 push-ups and 66 situps, each in under two minutes, then ran two miles in 16 minutes 10 seconds (well below the required 17:36 for her age group.)

But before she started her test, she characteristically noticed something amiss.

“Can you believe that?” the sergeant major asked no one in particular. “A bag of garbage outside my Dumpster.”

An audio slide show is available here.

An earlier story centering around CSM King's predecessor is available here.

[The Reaper]

Well done and congrats, CSM.

As far as meeting the same standards goes, admirable statement, but she would have failed the Men's push-ups scoring standards on her APFT, with a total score of 227.

Why do we have two APFT standards again?

TR

[LongWire]

Good for her...............But on another note, how did she even make the SGM list in todays Army???

She says she regrets not having been deployed to a war zone during her 29-year Army career, though she has trained many soldiers who were. And now, in her new job, she will have significant influence over the basic training of every enlisted soldier.


I've watched a lot of NFL games, but that doesn't qualify me to run training camp or the combine!!!!


There have been plenty of overseas where my ability to see a cigarette butt under a mattress has saved me and my buddies can.


But I digress, these are sad statements no matter what their gender, I'm sure we've had some males down there that fit the same bill, it just wasn't news worthy.

[SkiBumCFO]

I think it is great that she is considered a no slack hardass and she maybe excellent for the job but if anyone on the site was a former Drill Sgt they would know better. I never worked with one in SF so maybe we dont have one but you never know. Just happy to see that someone that works hard and that is passionate about what they do made it to the top. To TR's point I would even bet if they raised her standards for the PT test she would work hard enough to exceed them or die trying as she just sounds like that kind of a soldier. I am just a bit shocked that with everything going on in the world she has never been near enough to a combat zone to get a combat patch. I am sure she could have gotten herself there somehow. I was actually wondering the other day how a senior sgt without a combat patch would look in today's Army. Hell some of the guys probably have two or three different ones they could wear. When i went through basic in 1980 i did not have a single drill Sgt without a combat patch.

I am also trying to think what female she would have seen in a red beret in 1979 or early 1980. I didnt think the maroon beret had been returned to the Airborne at that point? I know that by 82 it had but i thought in 79/80 when she would have seen this commanding looking female in a red beret they were wearing the good old cunt cap with glider patch.

[Richard]

I'll never forget my DS in BCT - SFC Soloman - Korean War vet with 187th and combat jump star on his Master wings - two tours in RVN with 173rd - harder than the proverbial set of woodpecker lips - made sure everything we did was done to his standards and for our being able to accomplish the mission - bottom line with him was that he sought to ensure we were up to snuff in the event he was ever our Platoon Sergeant in combat.

Richard's $.02

[JJ_BPK]

Congratulations, Command Sgt. Maj. King

[Calrngr]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Well done and congrats, CSM.

As far as meeting the same standards goes, admirable statement, but she would have failed the Men's push-ups scoring standards on her APFT, with a total score of 227.

Why do we have two APFT standards again?

TR

Not trying to sharpshoot. But but on the current APFT standards for a male age 47-51 she scores 71pts in Push-ups, 100pts in Sit-ups & 86pts on the Run. For a total of 257. And she is actually on the extended scale (if they used it), because she got 114pts on the run. Not bad for a girl

[Lightningstrike]

I liked how you pointed out the pt score TR. I would be impressed with any women who could pull off a 300 at mens standards.

[csquare]

Good for her on being selected for the position. Since is it a TRADOC school, she'll maintain the standard for those candidates to pass and become Drill Sergeants. But, if she talks about the Common Operating Environment downrange in Afganistan and Iraq; there will be lots of Drill Sergeant candidates tuning her out, since she hasn't deployed.

[Calrngr]

Originally Posted by csquare

Good for her on being selected for the position. Since is it a TRADOC school, she'll maintain the standard for those candidates to pass and become Drill Sergeants. But, if she talks about the Common Operating Environment downrange in Afganistan and Iraq; there will be lots of Drill Sergeant candidates tuning her out, since she hasn't deployed.

Agree 100%. But I wish her the best of luck.

[Box]

meh